The Forever Gate Ultimate Edition

by Isaac Hooke

  Near the food court he spotted a big robot resting on a street corner. A soldier of some kind. Vaguely humanoid, it was twice the height of a man and three times wider. A red visor covered the eye area. The joints were hydraulically actuated. It appeared to have a jetpack. In place of hands were weapon mounts: the right arm ended in some kind of missile launcher, while the left terminated in a nasty looking twin turret.

  According to the Satori archives, those particular robots were called Patrollers, and they'd helped clean up and repair the damaged cities in the years after the war. These days it looked like they served mainly as enforcers of the peace.

  In the sky overhead, quadcopters occasionally darted past: small surveillance drones that were connected to the same city-wide wireless network the aReals used.

  He reached the food court and went inside. The few humans present finally met his eye, and actually smiled. They were obviously Satori surrogates. He checked their biometrics on his aReal and confirmed that the bodies were indeed registered to Satori.

  He ordered something called a hamburger from one of the serving robots and then approached a table containing three surrogates: two men and a woman.

  "Well hello," one of the men said.

  "Hello," Hoodwink said. "Do you mind if I join you?"

  "By all means." He introduced himself as Gnarls. The other two people at the table were Lion and Gwen.

  Hoodwink sat and bit into his burger.

  "First time as an 87A?" Gnarls asked.

  "What?" Hoodwink glanced at him. "Oh. No. I've inhabited a human body for a long time, I have."

  "Well good for you," Lion piped up. "I've been inside human bodies off and on for the past two hundred years. Honestly, in my opinion, they're one of the more interesting surrogate species. The gustatory sensations, the sexual pleasures, the intertwined emotions. They're way more fun than the Xevianthi."

  Gwen smiled fondly. "I've kind of grown attached to my own body. I'm going to miss it when we finally pack up shop and head to the next world. I hear it's soon, you know. That's why we've created the mothership."

  "Don't listen to her," Gnarls said. "We're going to be here for a long time yet. This world's resources will last us at least another millennia or two."

  Hoodwink shuddered as he considered the potential ramifications for humanity of two thousand years of slavery. Two hundred was bad enough. But two thousand? The species would never be able to recover.

  "We were just about to head back," Lion said. "Why don't you join us? Have you ever experienced a sexual foursome?"

  Hoodwink swallowed his latest piece of burger. "That's all right."

  "We can have sex in the corner over there instead if you like," Lion said. "The robots don't care. Hell, neither do the other surrogates. They sometimes join in."

  Hoodwink raised a hand. "That's fine."

  "I thought you said you've inhabited a human body for a long time," Gnarls told him. "Surely you haven't held back from experiencing all the pleasures that go along with that?"

  "You know," Hoodwink said, standing. "Perhaps this was a bad idea."

  "No no, finish your burger, man," Gnarls said. "We're the ones who are going. Sit sit."

  When Gnarls and the others stood, Hoodwink obeyed.

  "I'll give you my aReal number in case you change your mind," Lion said.

  The transmission request appeared on Hoodwink's aReal. He accepted it, not wanting to cause a fuss, and then filed it away in his local trash folder.

  "Thank you," Hoodwink said. "Nice meeting you all."

  He watched the three depart, dreading that some other surrogate would join him to fill the vacuum. Thankfully, the others kept to themselves. He counted six individuals seated at three different tables. All couples.

  When he finished his burger, Hoodwink wiped his hand in the provided napkin and made his way toward the exit. He passed one of the couples, and they nodded, smiling at him. He thought he saw desire mixed with invitation in their eyes, and he quickened his pace.

  He bumped into another pair as he crossed the threshold outside. The couple exchanged pleasantries with him, and then almost immediately asked him to have sex with them. Hoodwink quickly excused himself.

  He supposed the Satori didn't have much else to do with their surrogate bodies. He understood then why the real humans he had met were so eager to end the conversations he attempted to strike up. They were probably expecting him to demand they all have sex right there in the street.

  He took a different route back toward the apartment where he had awakened. He was looking forward to shutting out that very strange, very repressed world.

  He passed a human woman seated with her legs stretched across the pavement, and her back against the building behind her. She was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. Creamy white skin, high cheekbones, thin brows, a cute button nose, and long black hair clasped into an intricate pony-tail. Her eyes were startlingly blue. Her only flaw was the skin beneath those eyes, which was so thin that he could see all the veins underneath, the branching blue lines vanishing into the cheek area. Even so, for Hoodwink the veins only added to her allure.

  She held out a hand toward him, meeting his gaze. She was not actually human, then.

  Hoodwink felt an overwhelming sense of disappointment. He was about to turn away when she spoke.

  "Alms?" the woman said.

  He paused in disbelief. "You're begging?"

  "I am," she answered.

  He scratched his chin. "I wasn't aware that money was needed in this place?"

  "Oh it's not," she said.

  "Then why are you begging?"

  "I don't know," she said. "Alms?"

  He double-checked his aReal and confirmed that she was registered in the system as a human surrogate to a Satori named Ghra.

  Hoodwink sat down beside her. "I don't have alms. Mind, I don't think anyone does anymore."

  "That would explain why no one will give me money," she deadpanned.

  Hoodwink grinned. "I think I like you, I do." He reached for her hand. "I'm Hoodwink."

  "Sarella." She quickly withdrew her hand and looked away.

  "You seemed disappointed," Hoodwink told her.

  "Of course I'm disappointed. You have no alms."

  Hoodwink pursed his lips. "You don't want to have sex with me, do you?"

  Her face crumpled in disgust. "No!" She edged away from him.

  He laughed. "Good. You're the first surrogate I've met who hasn't tried to talk me into a threesome a minute into the conversation. Then again, I haven't met very many, I admit."

  "Oh they're all the same," Sarella agreed. "But I'm not like the others."

  "Maybe." Hoodwink noticed the sleeping bag rolled up on the pavement beside her. He nodded toward it. "You sleep out here?"

  "I do."

  "Don't you have an apartment?"

  She smiled wanly. "I prefer the streets."

  "Why?"

  She didn't answer.

  "You've been to the Inside, haven't you?" Hoodwink said.

  She peered searchingly into his eyes, but didn't otherwise answer.

  Hoodwink nodded slowly. "I can tell. You're too different from the others. I never thought I would find someone else who knew my pain. Someone who had seen what I had. You're one of the other Fifty Surrogates, aren't you?"

  "I thought I was the only one," Sarella said.

  "No," Hoodwink told her. "You were never the only one." He wrapped an arm around her and gave her a half hug.

  "I felt so alone," Sarella said. "Like you, I didn't think I would ever find anyone who would ever understand me. I'm not Satori. Not anymore. I'm human through and through."

  Hoodwink retracted his arm. "I feel the same way." He stared at her features uncertainly, his gaze lingering on the veins beneath her eyes. "Come home with me."

  "No," Sarella said.

  "I promise I won't have sex with you. I only want companionship. Someone who understands the human conditio
n. No real human being will even meet my eye. Please. I only want a friend."

  "I can be your friend out here, on the street." Sarella said.

  Hoodwink nodded. "All right. Then here I'll stay."

  And so he did. They chatted about everything in the hours to come, from the most mundane to the heartrendingly philosophical.

  When evening finally came, it was with some regret that he stood to go.

  "Are you sure you'll be safe here, alone in the dark?" he asked.

  "I'll be safe. Got some watchful friends nearby." She nodded toward the shop across the street. The robot shopkeeper could readily be seen beyond the window, watching them.

  And so he departed, only to return the next morning. "I brought you a sandwich." And they spent all that day talking, too.

  Hoodwink returned each day and their friendship blossomed. After a week he managed to convince her to come home with him. He set her up in the spare guest room and their friendship continued unabated.

  Until one day she seduced him.

  He had just returned from buying groceries. He placed the bags on the kitchen counter, and when he turned around, she stood there, spectacularly naked. Suddenly out of breath, he went to her, and mashed his lips against hers. She returned his kiss just as hungrily. He couldn't take off his clothes fast enough.

  As they lay there cuddling afterward, having copulated for the third time in an hour, Sarella said: "Do you ever wonder what it would be like to go back?"

  "You mean to the Inside?" Hoodwink asked.

  "Yes," she replied.

  He had told her all about his life on the Inside, and the daughter he once had. Sarella had shared her own life as the only child of a baker in return.

  "Every day I dream of it, I do," Hoodwink said. "If the Hivemind would allow it, I would go."

  "On an infiltration mission, you mean?" Sarella asked.

  "If that was what the Hivemind required of me," Hoodwink said carefully.

  "So you would betray the daughter you love?"

  Hoodwink sighed. "Yes. No. I mean, I don't know." He didn't want to have that conversation.

  "What if the Hivemind promised to let her live?" Sarella pressed. "In exchange for your help in destroying the remaining human colonists?"

  "I would refuse the mission then, I think," Hoodwink said. "I couldn't trust myself to complete it. And I don't believe the Hivemind would want me, either. The Satori know the whole surrogate program on Ganymede was flawed. Look at what it did to you and I. We think we're human, and yet in reality we're two aliens living out our lives in stasis far beneath the sea."

  "But you told me you wanted to go back," Sarella said.

  "Yes," Hoodwink agreed. "As a participant. Not a destroyer."

  "Hmm." Sarella gave him a forced smile. He sensed that his words were somehow troubling to her.

  He wondered if it was a bad idea to allow her into his house, and his life.

  He quickly forgot his misgivings when they had sex yet again.

  19

  Javiol floated in a murky holding cell made of steel. Energy bars denied any exit. Beyond, two strange iron golems stood watch. They were cast in the image of these so-called Satori, and occasionally activated rotors or extended metal tentacles to avoid drifting into the walls. Satoroids, they were called.

  How did I know that?

  With his mind, Javiol attempted to access the wall panel interface beyond the energy bars, but that didn't work. He wasn't sure why he thought it would.

  More questions filled his thoughts. How was he breathing underwater? How was he seeing in all those directions at once? Why was he in that body?

  The answer to all of those questions was simple. It was his comeuppance, he knew, for what he had done. To Ari. To the world.

  His punishment? To have his human mind trapped inside the body of an oversized fish.

  If he could have laughed, he would have. He once had so much power. He had been able to manipulate the very fabric of the world. He had created Direwalkers. Brute.

  But somehow he had fallen out of favor with One, his master. One, the AI that ruled the world.

  It was Hoodwink's fault. Hoodwink. Yes, Hoodwink must have done something. He had somehow wormed his way into One's favor. That must be it. And when Hoodwink had received the power to manipulate the world, he had immediately transformed Jeremy into that disgusting creature and placed him at the bottom of the ocean with others of its ilk.

  I'm Jeremy Flanners. Mayor of Severest. Faithful servant of One. Why have you forsaken me, One. Why?

  Perhaps Hoodwink wasn't entirely to blame for his current predicament. He remembered something the man had told him the last time they had talked:

  What reward did One promise anyway? To take you to that world you dream of every night? That world of water? If you ever go back, you'll get your world of water all right. You'll drink your fill. Just not in the way you'd hoped.

  His tentacles trembled. No, it wasn't in the way he had hoped. Not at all.

  Javiol had hated humanity, once. But in that moment he desired nothing more than to be human again.

  Filled with regret, he stared at the satoroids floating outside his cell.

  And then he remembered.

  He transmitted the override code to the robots. A rapid series of clicks, pops, and moans. Those robots in turn transmitted the code to the Shell.

  How can I serve you, oh great Javiol? the Shell sent. Somehow he knew the Shell was the AI of this place. The equivalent of One. Except unlike One, the Shell didn't rule that world.

  Javiol did.

  Let me out of this cage, Javiol transmitted.

  Instantly, the energy bars deactivated.

  Move your servants back, Javiol sent.

  The two satoroids retreated, giving him room.

  He whipped his tail and pumped his torso until he was outside of the cell. The algal colonies in his gastric cavity glowed purple, reflecting his jubilation.

  Before he had left the ocean behind two hundred years ago, he had helped program a much needed software update to the Shell. He had inserted a carefully-crafted, multi-layered backdoor with the patch, one that was designed to escape both the AI and manual code reviews. He was the only one who knew it was there.

  He was a genius.

  Wait a moment. I was here two hundred years ago?

  The moment of insight vanished, and the fleeting sense of who he really was faded with it. It felt like the memory was still there somewhere inside of him, but just out of reach. The feeling was similar to wearing a bronze bitch and sensing the power of vitra teasingly beyond his grasp, so near and yet so far.

  A bronze bitch. It seemed a lifetime ago when he had worn one. When he had been mayor. When he had lost everything.

  I want a human body, he sent the Shell. And I want Hoodwink.

  There was a pause.

  You wish to find Graol? the AI returned.

  Javiol didn't know what that was. No. Hoodwink.

  Another pause.

  Yes, the AI sent. I know where he is. But you also realize, Hoodwink is Graol.

  Javiol didn't know what to make of that. Take me to this Graol.

  The satoroids escorted him through the metal halls. Javiol repeatedly ingested the water and jetted it out again, propelling himself forward. He whipped his tail, too, struggling to keep up with the underwater golems.

  How do I know how to move this body?

  Soon the murky steel corridors gave way to coralline, and he found himself in the main cave system. He passed other satoroids, and sometimes the Satori sea creatures themselves. Occasionally these sea creatures greeted him; instinctively he gave the proper response dictated by Satori social decorum.

  He had intimate knowledge of these creatures and their customs, their security protocols, their AI. Once again he had a glimpse of what he actually was, but once more it slipped away.

  He didn't know what the hell he was. He didn't care. He only wanted to get out of that ocean and
back to civilization.

  The tunnel opened out into a wide artificial cliff covered in seaweed. The satoroids led him away from the cliff, into the masses of glowing Satori that were moored to long horizontal tracks by the thousands.

  He swam past these inanimate Satori. Though they were in stasis—or at least he thought they were—he felt like thousands of open eyes were watching him. Javiol strove to ignore the feeling.

  He passed row upon row of the sea creatures until finally the satoroids halted.

  Beside Javiol floated a nondescript entity that looked no different from any of the others.

  Graol, the Shell sent.

  This is Hoodwink? Javiol asked it.

  It is, the Shell returned. The body that is home to his consciousness, anyway.

  Though at first he didn't believe it, somehow he knew that the Shell was right. That was indeed Hoodwink.

  He tried to read the thoughts of that fish. As usual, the images returned were fragmented and incomplete, as could be expected of one whose consciousness had been transferred to another body. He thought he saw a naked woman at one point, but the image quickly evanesced.

  Javiol stared at the tentacled body of his arch enemy and wondered if he should kill him.

  He wrapped his stinging tentacles around the body and began to squeeze. Somehow he knew that if he applied the right amount of pressure to the gastric cavity, he could easily crush the quadbrain that lurked within. The unconscious sea creature did nothing to resist.

  Javiol paused as a sudden twisted idea came to him.

  He released his hold on the body and retreated.

  Can you disconnect him from his body? Javiol asked the Shell.

  I can, the Shell returned.

  Then do so, Javiol instructed the AI.

  Please specify the passcode.

  Javiol felt a surge of anger and his gastrointestinal algae glowed red. What do you mean, specify the passcode?

  Someone has programmed a passcode into the release mechanism of this unit.

  Hoodwink had done it, no doubt.

  Then override it! If Javiol had the ability to snarl, he would have. Instead he intertwined his tentacles.

  Unfortunately, the Shell returned. I cannot. If I attempt to forcibly remove him, he will die.